Planting & Rooting

This is a collection of recent things I have either planted out, or planted out to root for later transplanting.

Two fruit plants were donated to me, as they were not growing well in town. This is a Fantasia nectarine tree, a variety I already have one of. At worst, it's a backup tree, should the other cark it. It could also be used for grafting.

The other donation, was this blueberry. It's planted out alongside my other two varieties, one of which is Climax, and the other is Powder Blue. This variety of this new plant has been mislaid and will never be known.

I also traded a lot of cuttings and seeds online, and got two varieties of gooseberry. These were from plants themselves raised from cuttings, where the cuttings were from old farms or gold fields, in another part of the country. They should be older varieties, where most of the modern plants available are Pax and Invicta. I've got one Invicta out in my berry orchard. These are sitting in front of my north bed, which the elephant garlic cloves were planted out in.

Last year, I took cuttings from someone else's currant prunings. These I dipped in rooting hormone, and planted in a garden bed. And this year, given they grew roots in the garden bed, I transplanted them out in the field beside my purchased Magnus plant. I've also got a Cotswold Cross, an unknown red currant and a white currant. It just goes to show how easy it is to make your own plants, if you're willing to wait a year and have a source for genetic material to work from.

This year, I've got some gooseberry cuttings and black currant cuttings, which I've taken from someone else's prunings. The gooseberry are a thornless variety, and haven't had a problem with mildew. So not Invicta. The currants are likely Magnus again. Something I read, likely a fruit book I bought, recommended the black plastic to keep weeds down.

I also took two cuttings off my white currant, and have planted them out. But not photo. With a bit of luck, this will give me two more white currant plants next year. I should go out and see if I can get cuttings off the red currant. And for that matter, the Chilean cranberry. Hmm.

Appleton's Nursery Delivery

Last year's big purchase of plants was all my fruit trees. I've now got around 40 trees out in my orchard. This year's big purchase are two kinds of more practical trees, and something I bought on a whim.

I came home on Monday morning to find a package the postie had left at my gate. I keep the gate closed because, as I've probably mentioned before, South Neighbour's fence isn't too great. This means that if my gate is open, I get cows or sheep in my front yard, and at worst, in my back yard and field. This is a problem because they tend to do things like eat whatever I have planted around, including my citrus. My grapefruit is still recovering.

The packaging is quite solid. There is a whole covering of plastic, inside a whole covering of very sturdy paper.

The inner plastic bag helps keep the roots wet, as the trees have to be bare rooted to ship this way. Note there are 80 bare rooted plants in all packaged into this.

There are 20 sugar maple (acer saccharum), 50 hazelnut (corylus avellana) and 10 black chokeberry (aronia melanocarpa).

For now, I've heeled them in wet sawdust. This will help kill off the remaining odd leaf, and let them survive dormant, until the weather comes a bit better so I can plant them out.

Regarding the sugar maples, there was an article about someone up in Nelson who planted a lot of these out 20 years ago, and how they're just coming ready to harvest maple syrup from. And any time you mention them, you get some 'negative nancy' who says how you need a certain amount of frost which I wouldn't likely get, to be able to get maple syrup from them. They're an experiment for me. A recent article detailed a way in which you can get maple syrup sooner, and with less required frosts.

The hazelnuts might produce decent nuts. But they will be seed grown, which makes that not a certain thing. So, it'll be a source for coppiced wood. And I'll also have the opportunity to graft known varieties of hazelnut to them, once they've grown to a decent size.

The chokeberry. Well, I'd read a bit about them in some book or on some web sites, around the time I ordered. I don't remember why I ordered them, but they should add a nice bit of variety to the berry orchard. I'd probably have around 25 berry plants, in addition to the 40 fruit trees mentioned earlier. It's also not likely to be common, so I should be able to trade it for other plants or varieties of plants I already have, at a later point once I've rooted some cuttings.

Elephant Garlic / 2013-2014

I was given some cloves of elephant garlic, which I planted out in a lazy spot.

Day X+0: At this point, all have come up.

Day X+63: There appears to have been some attrition at this point. I suspect some fell over.

Day X+93: Nearing the point of harvest. I needed them to yellow up a bit more, I think to the second leaf.

Day X+100: Here's the bulbs harvested. They were hung up in the shed.

There were some mini-bulbs. They weren't bulbils from the flower heads, as I cut those off and ate them. I think they were hanging off the big bulbs. In any case, they were planted out in the paddock, where I think they rotted away. I should have potted them up and grown them to be transplanted when more sturdy.

Day X+228: The year's harvest of Elephant garlic was still hanging in the shed. I've not eaten any, and decided to just plant it out. Someone else mentioned that they use it as a leek, rather than eating the bland standard leeks. So, that sounds like a plan. The heads are broken up, and weighed. At 380 grams.. I don't know. It'd mean more if I knew how much last year's planting weighed. There's definitely more cloves though, because a clove turns into a head, which contains more cloves than it started as.. obviously.

Where the cloves are located for future reference.

The cloves are now covered over with the potting mix.

The remaining five elephant garlic bulbs are planted in the bed by the back door, near the lemongrass. I've recently read that the red leafed lemongrass isn't good for much. The other type is the one which gives the thick stems for cooking. This one at best can be used for a tea with it's dud red leaves. If this is true, then I think that avoiding buying any more Little Fruity branded products is probably a wise idea.

Day X+236: And finally, here's one bulb of normal garlic I left in the ground last summer. Each of the cloves has sprouted. I'm just going to leave this here indefinitely, and see how wide it can grow and divide over the future years to come. This is supposed to result in smaller cloves as it divides and is crowded out. To the right of the unharvested garlic, I planted out some mustard I grew. This was sprouted from seeds bought at a bulk food store. They're the kind of seeds you use for pickling. It seems to be surviving the frosts pretty well.

This unharvested garlic, and the second planting of elephant garlic, are actually in the same continuous bed. In this last photo you could see the cheap fencing I put in to stop the chickens getting in and scratching up everything.